Fifty-Three Days
by NezumiPi
Summary: Victoria Hand retrieves an eighteen-year-old Grant Ward from prison fifty-three days before he's scheduled to enroll in SHIELD academy. (Whole story takes place in the Framework universe.)
1. Chapter 1

Warnings (over whole story): Extensive discussion of abuse, including offenses against children, women, and animals. Genre-typical violence and death. Homophobia. Substance abuse. Casual discussion of suicide. Reference to statutory rape. Spoilers through the end of Season 4. Actually, just through the last episode with Ward in it, which I think is S4E19, but whatever.

* * *

 **Day 1**

"I thought we were going to SHIELD," said Grant Ward, as the black SUV came to a stop in a very normal suburban driveway that led to a very normal, if rather small, suburban house, a pale brick cottage with a very normal dark green door. The yard was neatly mowed, excluding a few weeds and patches of crab grass. It was as though it had been deliberately landscaped to be neither noticeably well-manicured nor memorably decrepit. Grant eyed the house suspiciously. He was still dressed in burgundy elastic-waistband prison scrubs, and was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that his sentence was somehow being commuted, that he was back in the real world with its plentiful windows and freely available dinner knives.

"What makes you think this isn't SHIELD?" asked the driver, turning the vehicle off. She had told Grant her name was Victoria Hand – he had no way of knowing if she had been telling the truth, about that or anything else. She was wearing a perfectly fitted grey pantsuit that was forgettable in every way. Hand herself was less forgettable, between the bright red streak in her hair and her constant, unnecessary inscrutability. So far, she had not provided a straight answer to a single one of Grant's queries.

"Are you going to answer everything with a question?"

"No," said Hand. Without elaborating, she got out of the SUV and retrieved her crutches from the back seat before she began hobbling toward the front door.

Grant lingered outdoors for a moment. On one level, he was savoring the open space, the absence of walls. On another, he was feeling choked by his freedom, as though the world was a bowl, rising up around him on all sides. On still another, perhaps more subconscious level, he knew that although there were no physical walls, he would almost certainly be stopped by someone, somehow, if he attempted to run. By all appearances, he could take Hand in a fight, but there had to be some kind of advanced weapon or tracker trained on him. He picked up a largish wood chip from the mulched flower bed and palmed it, acting on an instinct which told him to never stop pressing advantages, and then followed Hand into the house.

A very small part of Grant had expected that somehow the house was SHIELD headquarters, or perhaps it led to a secure elevator, followed by a series of unmappable tunnels, that lead to SHIELD headquarters. But no, it was just a house. There was some art on the walls – generic, like you'd find in a hotel – and a few cactuses baking on the various windowsills. (Cacti? Grant had never been good with the finer points of English grammar.)

Hand was busy settling down onto a sofa, elevating her leg.

"Did that happen-" began Grant. "Were you injured working for SHIELD?"

Hand grunted non-committally. "I don't usually do recruitment," she said, "but I wanted to stay useful while this," she waved dismissively at the lower half of her body, "sorts itself out."

That _was_ information, although not actually the information Grant had requested. He was taking everything in, still not entirely clear on what was happening. He had been summoned from his cell to meet with a visitor. Just having a visitor was odd – family never came and his public defender hadn't spoken with him in over two years. He had always held out hope that a reporter would come digging into the story of the Ward's wayward middle son, and that he would be able to use the curiosity of the press to his advantage. Somehow. He had never had a clear mental image of exactly what that would look like. At any rate, his visitor hadn't been a reporter, but instead a severe-looking woman with a red streak in her dark hair. She had seemed impatient with their meeting, as if every word of conversation was putting her further and further behind schedule.

She had tipped her chin downward, as though she were peering at him over invisible glasses, and said, "Ward, arson, correct?" A string of words with no verbs in it, but still a clear sentence.

"I was convicted of arson," Grant had said, carefully admitting nothing.

The woman had tsked then. "I don't approve of putting children in adult prisons."

"I'm alm-" Grant had begun to protest that he was very nearly no longer a minor when he had remembered what day it was. "I'm eighteen."

"I know. Happy birthday. Is it a happy birthday, though? Finally out of solitary, but then of course entering general population."

Grant had said nothing. He had spent the last two and a half years debating the relative merits of solitary confinement and exposure to bigger, more dangerous men. He didn't need to discuss the issue with this woman.

"I'm Victoria Hand," she had said, "and if you're not stupid, you're getting out today."

There hadn't been enough paperwork to justify anyone's release, let alone chopping twenty-two years off of his sentence. That was what was really strange. In Grant Ward's experience, the legal system ran on enormous quantities of paperwork. His case itself was plainly open-and-shut, and had nonetheless required three and a half inches of paper, of forms in triplicate and statements that had been photocopied to the point of illegibility. Appeals were more paperwork. Parole hearings were more paperwork. Hell, when he'd outgrown the cheap moccasins they gave him for shoes, there had been four separate forms required for him to get a new pair (he had aimed a size up, figuring he'd grow into them before they arrived).

But they had just walked, out, stopping first by his cell to collect his few possessions. Hand had shown the guards a badge and suggested they call their supervisors and the sequential gates that led to the outside world had opened.

Grant wondered where Hand's badge was now. It had looked rather bulky; she couldn't have just tucked it in a pocket.

"There's a cot for you in the basement," said Hand. "I'd tell you to get settled in, but you don't really have much to unpack. You can look around, get a feel for the place, but don't try to leave." There was something about the way she said _try to_ that made clear attempts would not succeed.

"This isn't really your house," said Grant, more to himself than to anyone else. "If it was, you wouldn't let me explore." Because there was no reaction, he went further. "Your leg is broken," he said. "I could kill you. I could rape you."

Hand just yawned. "I'm going to take a nap before dinner. Wake me if you lose a finger."

And then Grant watched as she fell asleep almost immediately. It was actually rather impressive, the way she could plummet, rather than gently descend, into sleep. Still, he waited until her breathing evened before backing slowly out of the living room and into the entry corridor. The house was very small, really only four rooms. The living room, kitchen, bathroom, and master bedroom were all situated in a grid around the thin hallway that extended from the front door. There was a door in the living room that led to the basement – since Grant was apparently supposed to head down there, he decided it would be last on his self-guided tour. (His first impulse, of course, was to defy her by _not_ searching the house, but he wasn't about to be manipulated by such basic reverse psychology.)

He went to the kitchen first, pocketing a paring knife and helping himself to some graham crackers. They were stale. There wasn't much fresh food in the kitchen. There were some canned goods, dried pasta, cereal, and a lot of freezer burned frozen pizzas. No milk for the cereal. No fresh fruit. No bread. Some eggs that didn't smell so hot. He looked at the row of little plastic spice containers. Curry was almost empty. Cardamom was full. The silverware drawer showed that whoever lived here regularly bent and unbent the tines of the forks, probably jamming them into the outdated dishwasher. _Someone_ lived here. But maybe not full time. Maybe a vacation home, although a bland suburban neighborhood was a weird choice for a summer cabin. Grant went to see if he could open a window, but he couldn't find any sort of slider or latch. The glass seemed stuck in place.

He looked in the bathroom. It wasn't very interesting, although he noted that the door had no lock. He filed that information away. He didn't find Hand very attractive, but still, any port in a storm. There were simple hygiene products. Store brand soap and toothpaste. A women's safety razor. He thought about pocketing that as well, but it was strictly worse than the paring knife and far more likely to be noticed. There was a box of tampons under the sink. There was makeup. Didn't look like much to Grant, but he readily admitted to having no idea how much makeup counted as 'a lot'.

He moved to the bedroom. It was tidy, insofar as there was no dirty laundry on the floor or piles of junk in the corners, but it wasn't very clean. The carpet needed to be vacuumed, and the windows were streaky. That was true of the whole house, Grant realized. It wasn't cluttered, but it wasn't well-kept either. The bedside table had a single drawer which was either stuck or locked. There was a chest of drawers with a mirror on top. No photographs or china dolls or anything else personal. Grant was briefly tempted to open the drawers and steal a pair of Hand's panties. Again, not really his main sexual interest, but he'd been in solitary for a very long time, with only his imagination to keep him company. Still, he hadn't entirely ruled out joining SHIELD. Might as well keep his options open. There was a small stereo with a CD player and a single tape deck. Grant popped the CD player lid open. The disk was clearly home burnt and was labeled in Sharpie _#1_. He closed the lid and moved on to the closet. There was a lacrosse stick in there, too big to steal, but worth remembering in case of a fight. The closet was mostly empty, no more than twenty garments in total, all women's.

So what had Grant learned? Not much. Hand – if this really was her house – was not a germaphobe, lived here only sporadically, and wasn't particularly appearance-conscious. Grant was no Sherlock Holmes. He couldn't make amazing deductive leaps. Grant impulsively grabbed another knife from the kitchen – this time a small steak knife that wouldn't be missed – and went down into the basement. It was less than half the size of the house, which made Grant wonder if there was more hidden behind a false wall. It was cinderblock and tile, clean and sterile. Across from the washer and dryer was a twin bed with a cheap little nightstand and lamp. Grant hid one knife under the mattress and the other in the nightstand. The bedsheets were clean. They didn't smell new, but they smelled like detergent, recently washed.

Grant was suddenly very tired. Even though he had spent the las two years of his life lying on a featureless bed in a featureless room, he felt irresistibly called to do just that.

* * *

"Let me give you a general sense of what's happening," said Hand. "You're scheduled for your intake evaluation at SHIELD in a little under two months, at which point you will be assessed – physically, mentally, and psychologically – for fitness to serve. Which means that I have fifty-three days to get you ready for that evaluation. I'm certainly not trying to fix all of…this." She waggled her fingers in his direction, palm down, the way one might indicate an unpleasant, if not precisely poisonous, patch of mold. "Just trying to get you to the point where you can enter the Academy. If you fail out once accepted, that's not my problem."

Hand took a bite of her dinner, frozen pizza reheated in the microwave, chewing and swallowing efficiently if not particularly delicately. "Now, for the time we're together, I can scrub you at any time for any reason, including no reason at all. If I get sick of you, if I don't think you're making enough progress, if I don't think you're showing me that you can become a SHIELD agent, I'll scrub you." She ate another bite of pizza. "That said, I consider myself fair-minded. I don't expect you to already _be_ an agent. That's what the Academy is for. And I don't expect you to already _be_ ready for intake. That's why I planned a lag between pulling you and running your intake assessment." Fifty-three days was actually the longest lag she had ever seen between recruitment and intake, and she was still worried it wasn't going to be enough.

"Why'd you pick me?" asked Grant. It was what he had been wondering virtually nonstop since he had left prison.

Hand tented her fingers together, considering. "Let's start with the most straightforward reason," she said. "I very much dislike your father, and-

"Wait, you know my dad?"

"I don't like his politics," she clarified. "He championed a bill that…impacted my life." She pursed her lips. "Although the further data I've gathered on him while considering you for recruitment certainly didn't improve my initial opinion of the man."

Grant laughed ruefully, the quiet half-laugh people produce in response to miserable irony.

"At any rate," said Hand, "the thought of recruiting you right out from under his nose, even though he will never know about it…" She smiled, just a little. "Well, that's one of the few perks that comes with a job like this."

Grant grimaced. He didn't like having any association with his family, and he certainly didn't want to be grateful to them. But still, if it got him out of prison. "If I get 'scrubbed'," he asked, "you take me out back and," he made a gun with his right hand and pointed it at his own head.

"No, no, we don't go around killing civilians without good cause." Hand laughed, a genuine throaty laugh. "Now, there is an argument to be made that you haven't paid your debt to society and should be returned to jail."

"Prison," corrected Grant.

"Whatever," said Hand dismissively. "Re-incarcerating you would create further problems, so if you don't continue into the program, you'll be given identity documents with a new name and dropped in a city relatively far from your old stomping grounds. Milwaukee comes to mind. We'd leave you with one month's rent prepaid on a room in a flop house. Long enough for you to get a crappy job – I'm thinking landscaping, but it's up to you – which would be enough to cover rent and food. We'd monitor you to ensure you don't return to your old habits, but otherwise you'd enter free society."

"If something sounds too good to be true," said Grant. Instead of finishing the adage, he waggled his fingers at Hand, mirroring the dismissive gesture she had used toward him when the conversation began.

"Mr. Ward," said Hand, "you are vastly underestimating how hard the next fifty-three days will be."

* * *

Grant was hand-washing the dishes. No point in using the dishwasher for two plates and a drinking glass. "Is this a SHIELD safehouse?" he asked.

"No," said Hand. "It's my house."

"Can't be," said Grant. "You'd have better security than just a deadbolt."

"How do you know I don't?"

Grant ignored her evasion. "And besides," he said, "whenever girls have a place, they decorate it. They put up photos."

Hand's voice was quiet and, although Grant did not yet realize it, dangerous. "Do they? What kinds of photos do _girls_ put in their _places_?"

"Like, people mostly? Your family, your friends? You've got a wedding ring, so you must have pictures from your wedding."

Hand was very slightly pleased that the boy was at least minimally observant in noticing her ring, which tempered her response down from enraged to sardonic. "Are you stupid? Are you a moron? I'm a spy! Do you think I would document all of my vulnerabilities and then put them in frames for anyone to see?"

"No, ma'am." Grant looked chastened, with a little hint of defiance. "Sorry," he added, almost too quiet and indistinct to be understood. He was looking away, so when a candy bar suddenly entered his field of vision, he was briefly confused as to where it came from. "…the hell?"

"I'm using positive reinforcement to shape your behavior," said Hand. "You apologized. Didn't really sound like you meant it, but we'll get to that later. For now, this is good enough." She waved the candy at him again. Grant could now see that it was a mini package of M&Ms, the kind that people gave out on Halloween.

"I'm not a dog."

"If you were a dog, I wouldn't give you chocolate," answered Hand, sounding bored. She held the candy out for a few seconds more before tearing it open and pouring the whole thing into her own mouth. After chewing and swallowing, she shrugged. "Your loss."

Fucking great. Now Grant wanted those damn M&Ms more than anything.

Then there was no more talking. Hand had paperwork to do. She gave Grant free reign of the television, which he used to watch basketball until it seemed like time for him to go to bed. He could leave soon enough, but this woman was insane and there was no point running away without figuring out her capabilities first. And besides. He wasn't stupid enough to turn down a free ride.

From his cot in the basement, Grant could hear music. A plinking instrument, maybe a harp. He recognized the one-two-three rhythm as a waltz, but not a melody he'd ever heard at one of his parents' fancy galas. At first, he thought the song was just really, really long, but then he realized it was on repeat.

The damn house was a mindfuck. Grant went to sleep.

* * *

 **Day 2**

When Grant was released from prison, his possessions at the time of his booking were returned to him: a cheap nylon wallet, half a pack of chewing gum, and – of course – his clothes. (His lighter had been retained as evidence.) The clothes didn't fit him in the slightest. He couldn't even get into the jeans. He could probably manage to drag the t-shirt over his head by tearing a few stitches, but it would have restricted his breathing and looked ridiculous.

So he was wearing prison scrubs. The same ones he wore yesterday and the same ones he wore to bed. They probably weren't stinking at this point, but he doubted that his clothes smelled fresh.

Which explained why Hand had told him to get in the car and driven him to the mall. They entered by the food court.

"I can't pay for new clothes," said Grant.

"There's an expense account," said Hand. "And you're just getting the basics. Sears. Not whatever trendy nonsense you used to wear when you were a rich kid."

Grant wanted to argue, but he realized that while he had no idea how much his family had spent on clothes, it was probably more than the prices at Sears. He kept his mouth shut. He was getting free stuff. No need to wreck it.

They walked past a pet store that had set up a wire enclosure out front so the rabbits could hop around. Grant lunged forward, closed hand out, and the rabbits scattered. Grant cursed.

Hand rolled her eyes. "They have eyes on the sides of their heads," she said. "That means they're prey animals. They need to see in all directions to scan for predators. You're giant, you ran at them, of course they hopped away. Come on, we're not here for this."

After they made it to Sears and found the men's department, they started with Hand selecting four slightly different pairs of pants and three slightly different shirts, directing Grant to try them on so as to determine his sizes. Once they had that, she grabbed three pairs of pants and five shirts. Occasionally she gave Grant a simple choice ("Grey or black?") but more often she didn't. Nothing fancy. No logos or writing. Simple stuff that would last. Then they backtracked to the other side of the store to grab socks, briefs, and undershirts.

Hand lingered over a rack of belts before selecting a thin black one.

"Don't kill yourself," she said, handing it over.

"Good advice," answered Grant. He furrowed his brow at the business clothes, unsure whether he wanted them or was disgusted by them.

Hand just shook her head. "You'll need a suit for your SHIELD intake if you make it that far. Let's see if you can make it through the first month before we bother with that."

Shoes were last. Simple off-brand white sneakers, but they fit, they had regular laces ("Again," said Hand, "I officially recommend against killing yourself."), and they were a hell of a lot more comfortable than the rubber sandals everyone wore in lockup.

"Can I get a watch?" asked Grant suddenly, eyeing a display. "A cheap one," he clarified.

"What for?"

"…so I know what time it is?"

Hand considered for a moment. "Sure. Find a digital one, less than ten dollars."

She paid for their purchases and allowed Grant to duck into a restroom to change. Even though he had turned the shirt inside out so the Massachusetts Department of Corrections stamp was no longer visible, he didn't want to walk around in the prison getup any longer than he had to. He could run, he realized. The mall wasn't crowded, but there were enough people, enough open shops that he could blend in and hide.

But he didn't do that. He left the bathroom dressed in normal civilian clothes and flagged down Hand, who was comparing prices on pocketbooks.

"Shall we try the rabbits again?" she asked.

"Uh," said Grant noncommittally.

But of course, they were walking in that direction anyway, since the pet store was in between Sears and their parking spot. As they rounded the walkway corner, Grant could see the wire enclosure was still out and he felt his chest clench, which was stupid. He wasn't afraid of rabbits and if they were afraid of him, that was just too damn bad.

"You don't have to," said Hand, almost bored, like it was some kind of challenge at which he could not possibly expect to succeed.

Grant sneered in her direction before stomping off toward the rabbit enclosure. Of course, stomping frightened the rabbits, who gathered at the far end. Grant growled in annoyance. He hadn't _started_ yet. The way he walked up shouldn't _count_. The rabbits didn't seem to buy into this logic because no matter how gently Grant reached over the fence, they still hopped away.

The apathetic pet store clerk, sitting on a chair a few feet away, looked up from her magazine. "Quit harassing the bunnies."

"I wasn't-"

"Come on," said Hand.

"It's not my fault, I wasn't trying to-"

But Hand was already walking away.

They stopped at a park on the way home, one with a fairly flat paved walking path lined by squat bushes studded with purple flowers. The paved path, Grant assumed, was to accommodate Hand's leg. The flowers were just pointless. Grant felt like he should justify or defend his failure with the rabbits, but at the same time he felt indignant that anyone was judging his capacity to pet small mammals. They walked in silence.

After perhaps a quarter mile, Hand spoke. "At some point, we're going to have to discuss your index offense."

"Huh?"

"What you got sent to jail for."

"Prison," corrected Grant.

Hand ignored him. "They're going to ask you about it at your SHIELD assessment and you're going to need to give a good answer without getting too riled."

"I was convicted of arson," said Grant, stiffly.

"Yeah, that's exactly what you don't want to do. Lockdown, clench the jaw. Honestly, you look like you're plotting another felony right now."

Grant put on his widest rictus grin. "I was convicted of arson," he repeated. "Better?"

"God, you're such a shit," said Hand. She paused to readjust her crutches. "We have to get to it eventually, but we don't have to start there."

Another quarter mile of silence. Grant found the purple flowers so offensive, he began to wish that he were allergic so that he had a more legitimate reason to despise them.

"You said last night that you found stuff out about my dad."

"Amongst other things, we found records of a CPS investigation into your household. It was closed, deemed unfounded."

"CPS never investigated us. I would have remembered that."

"It was before you were born. Your brother Christian was three years old when he was taken to the emergency room with a radial fracture of his left arm. That's damage done by a twisting force, lots of little fissures. It _can_ happen by accident, but it's a suspicious injury."

"That must've been my dad. Bad temper. Not very creative."

"The case was closed. No charges."

"Probably paid them off."

"Could be," acknowledged Hand. "Or they just couldn't get enough evidence to proceed. Happens a lot. You can't exactly have a preschooler testify. Or maybe it really was an accident."

"No, he threw things when he got angry, and when me and my brothers were little, he threw us. I can picture it, see exactly how it would make a…what did you call it, radial fracture? I was – I don't know – maybe six years old, so Thomas would have been about two. You could always tell when dad was getting angry. I tried to get in the way, but it didn't work. He grabbed Thomas by the arm and lifted him up. I was trying to hit him – my father, not Thomas – kicking at his legs and yelling and trying to get him to let Thomas go. It didn't work. There were these French doors with huge panes of glass. He threw Thomas at the doors. There was blood and there was glass everywhere."

* * *

"You eat a lot of frozen pizza," said Grant.

"Can you cook?" asked Hand.

Grant shook his head.

"Well," she said, "me neither."

* * *

 **Notes: (1) Yes, I will get back to my Cyclops fic eventually. Just not yet. (2) No, it's not going to go one day at a time for all 53 days. (3) This is a redemption fic, which means there's something to redeem. Grant starts out as a pretty bad guy, not just misunderstood. Also, he lies a lot. (4) Lettuce is the only vegetable that is only ever served fresh, never cooked, frozen, or canned.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Day 3**

After a couple of showers and a new set of clothes, Grant's general appearance and odor roughly met the standards of free society. With one exception. "Your hair is disgusting," said Hand.

"Not a lot of salons on the cell block."

"Just give yourself a buzz cut and start over." She handed him a clipper set, but he didn't take it.

"I don't want to." Grant's upper lip curled. "My head gets cold," he grumbled.

"Perhaps you've heard of the 'hat', an exciting new invention."

Grant turned his head to the left, still maintaining an intensely sour look on his face. "There's a tattoo," he mumbled, too quietly to be understood.

"What was that?" asked Hand.

"A tattoo. On my head. Under the hair."

"Ah," she said with recognition, as if this were a common problem she faced in her line of work. Maybe it was. "A swastika?"

"No! I'm not a Nazi!"

"But you did get it in jail, didn't you?"

"Prison," corrected Grant. "And no, it was when I was in pretrial detention. In juvie."

Hand held out the clipper kit again. "It's going to be seen when you do your SHIELD intake, so we might as well handle it now."

Grant took the case this time, went into the bathroom and shut the door. He used the scissors to cut off big, irregular chunks of hair. Then he pocketed them – never know when they might come in handy. He set the clippers to a #2 and began passing them over his head, trying not to meet his own eyes in the mirror as he did so. Hand was playing mind games now. Put him off balance. Break him down. Humiliate him. He wasn't going to play. Shave his head? Sure. No problem. He wasn't going to lose it over something so stupid.

When he was done, he brushed as much of the hair as he could into the trash can and rinsed the rest down the sink. He splashed his face with water for no particular reason and walked back into the living room to face Hand.

"Here," he said, holding out the clipper case, and determinedly avoiding her gaze.

She shook it as she grabbed it, then, having not heard the exact set of clinks and thuds she expected, held out her hand. "Give me the scissors." She sighed. "If you were being smart, you would have taken something from within the clipper mechanism. Much harder to detect."

Grant ceded the scissors without argument. Hand still hadn't confiscated the knives he took from the kitchen.

"Well, come here," said Hand. "Let me see." She was still seated sideways on the couch, propping up her broken leg, so Grant dropped down on one knee. She didn't touch his head – he appreciated that – but leaned over so she could read the uneven lettering. " _I ALONE AM THE GREAT WHITE HUNTER_." She snorted. "Where'd you come up with that?"

Grant stood so his head wasn't at Hand's eyeline. "I heard it on the radio. It wasn't like I agreed with those guys. It was just a matter of finding a group to ally with."

"And you allied with the skinheads."

"Well, it wasn't like I was going to fit in with La Nuestra Familia," snapped Grant. "I wasn't one of them. I didn't believe it, that's why I picked some song lyric instead of a swastika or an eighty-eight. I just needed backup."

"You chose to join up with skinheads to protect yourself."

"It didn't matter. I got convicted and sentenced pretty fast, and then I wasn't with any kind of crew."

"It _did_ matter," answered Hand, "because your fake belief strengthened others' real belief and, if for no other reason, because you allowed them to tattoo you."

Grant's shoulders dropped very slightly. "I'm not proud of it." He straightened again, scowling. "But it's not me. It's not like I wanted it. I did what I had to do."

* * *

 **Day 10**

There was no schedule. Hand assigned Grant various tasks. She seemed particularly keen that he master geography, refine his French, and start learning Polish. When he passed a test, he got M&Ms. She didn't stop him from doing strength exercises, but said there was no point in bulking up.

"You should be doing endurance work," said Hand. "Go for a run."

Grant tipped his head meaningfully toward the front door that was supposedly secured with much more than a deadbolt.

"You never tried it? It opens normally from the inside."

She also gave him a book to read on the history of SHIELD. Hand herself spent a lot of time on the phone and in front of the computer, doing…something. Grant couldn't figure it out and Hand wasn't forthcoming. Once, it sounded an awful lot like hostage negotiation, but she was far too blasé for that to be the case.

The only constant was the one-two-three not-quite-a-harp music played on repeat every night as Hand went to sleep and Grant fiddled with the backlight on his watch.

Over a week had passed since Grant left the Massachusetts prison system, when Hand asked another one of the questions they apparently had to discuss at some point:

"Did you have any sexual contact with other inmates?"

"No. That's why I was in segregation. They put minors in seg for their own safety."

"How about with the corrections officers?"

Grant furrowed his brow, as though he didn't quite understand the question.

"I'll take that as a yes," said Hand.

"I didn't say yes," hissed Grant.

"Was there force?"

"No. It was a trade."

"For what?"

"You really want me to say it?" Grant grimaced. "It's stupid. It would be better if it was something bigger."

Hand waited.

"Salt and pepper. Since I didn't eat in the mess, I didn't get salt and pepper. The food was bad. I wanted it to be less bad. So I had sex with a guard for little shakers of salt and pepper."

"Man or woman?" asked Hand.

"Woman. I'm not queer."

"Were you attracted to her?"

"No."

"Then it doesn't really matter if you were attracted to her gender or not." Hand paused to let that sink in. "Joining SHIELD means erasing most of your past records. You won't get any chance to prosecute her."

"I wouldn't anyway. Her word against mine. Who'd believe me?"

"Any sex between a corrections officer and an inmate is rape in the eyes of the law. Consent is not at issue."

"Where's the proof we had sex? She gave me a condom. It was over a year ago."

Hand considered this. "Unfortunately, you're probably right."

"In books," said Grant, "people break down about stuff like that. They cry and shower with their clothes on. It was…I didn't like it, but it wasn't – I don't know – it wasn't terrible." Grant's upper lip curled. "I know that sounds like I'm being defensive, but I'm not. I don't have bad dreams about it. I don't feel scared or angry or numb when I think about it. It's just a thing that shouldn't have happened."

"Believe it or not, you're not the first person to have that reaction to sexual victimization. People vary from one another in their general level of resilience, and within themselves in how resilient they are to particular stressors. If you're not upset, you don't have to force yourself to feel that way."

They were both silent for several minutes.

"I know legally, it's one way, but," he inhaled silently, "in a way, I wanted it. Not exactly. Not with her. But solitary was like being in the ocean, when you're maybe a hundred yards out. It's not like you can't find the shore, but you don't have to see it. You can just float there and you stop knowing where you are because you're not touching anything. You're not touching anything, so you don't even know where your body is. You're unconnected to the map." Grant was looking out the window now, fingertips resting on the glass. "Have you ever been in solitary?" he asked.

"I've never been incarcerated for a crime," said Hand, "but yes, I've been in solitary confinement. About a year ago. I led a tactical squad that went after," she sighed, "you haven't heard of him, he's utterly unimportant, he called himself Carrion, like a dead animal." Hand rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I was captured. He intended to use me as a bargaining chip to convince SHIELD to give him access to 'secret cloning technology' which literally does not exist. He stuck me in a shipping container for twenty-six days, left me food and water. There was no torture. Like I said, he just wanted me as a hostage." She paused to briefly make eye contact with Grant. "SHIELD trains us on how to handle capture. It's a known risk. But sometime around the end of the first week, the isolation produced…I can't quite describe it. I started to feel very diffuse, as though I were more than one person. You know those little disagreements you have with yourself? Is it better to wash the dishes now, or watch some television? Did I really like that movie, or just the book it was based on? I felt as though two distinctly different people were there, one taking each side, and that I wasn't either one of them."

Grant thought Hand's eyes seemed closer together than usual, her brow forward and furrowed. She looked uncomfortable, like someone with a bad back who couldn't find a painless posture. "How did you get out?"

"It's not very exciting. SHIELD tracked Carrion down and arrested him. He gave over my location pretty much immediately. He never wanted me to die."

"What happened to Carrion? Does SHIELD operate prisons?"

"We do, for hostiles who can't be contained in civilian facilities," said Hand. "Carrion could have been housed in a regular jail, ("Prison," muttered Grant) but it didn't matter. He was dying, some kind of longstanding organ failure – he had hoped this imaginary cloning tech would save his life. He fell into a coma within a few days of his arrest, and he died not long after that."

"Do you hate him?" asked Grant.

"No, some of the people I've tracked deserve hate, but Carrion was more pathetic than anything else."

"But he hurt you."

"Well, I can't go around hating everyone who hurts me," said Hand, pleasantly indifferent. "I'm an agent. I get hurt a lot."

* * *

 **Day 15**

"Ice that for fifteen minutes, twice a day, for the next week."

Grant nodded as he backed out the door toward Hand's SUV. He should have known that SHIELD would have a tattoo remover in their employ. They were an undercover agency – their agents probably got unwanted ink all the time. Still he glared at Hand and growled, "You did that on purpose," as he got in the vehicle.

"I certainly didn't take you to a appointment because I tripped," answered Hand crisply.

"You didn't tell me it was going to be a black guy." Grant's hands curled into fists so he wouldn't scratch the unbearably itchy spot on his head. And because he was pissed off.

"Agent Nickerson is a top-notch appearance artist. Adding or removing tattoos, scars, birthmarks. I've worked with him many times before."

"You picked him to humiliate me!" shouted Grant. "I told you I didn't mean it and you made me sit there with that guy staring at me, probably thinking I'm some kind of, of…"

"Skinhead?"

Grant said nothing.

"You may have chosen under duress, but you _did_ choose. Not everyone who goes into juvenile detention affiliates, even loosely, with a hate group. You did. I wanted to make sure you understood the consequences of that choice."

"Bite me."

"You are responsible for your own actions and you are not blameless. It's not so long ago that you threaten to rape and murder me."

"I wouldn't have _done_ it. I've never raped anybody."

"Yes, because empty threats of sexual violence cause no harm whatsoever." Hand paused. "Your actions have consequences."

* * *

 **Day 17**

"I've been thinking," said Grant. "You said you hated a law my dad worked on. I don't know every vote he ever cast, but I know that legislators don't do anything alone. Every bill has a thousand fingerprints on it. And most of those guys have kids." He briefly looked Hand in the eye, to ensure she was following his argument. "You could have picked any of them. Why me?"

Hand nodded approvingly, as though she had been waiting for him to ask this question. "If you're accepted into SHIELD operations, you will very likely be asked to work on classified projects, undercover, even deep cover. You have to separate from your previous life. No one can know what you really do, who you really are. That's easiest, of course, if you don't really have a previous life. You've got no girlfriend, no children; you're estranged from your family; you didn't even have friends in jail."

"Prison," Gran corrected automatically.

Hand continued as if she hadn't been interrupted. "There's no one to notice if you just disappear, which is exactly what you're going to do. We already have paperwork in place that says you were transferred to another facility on the other side of the state. Of course, they'll have no record of your arrival. Meanwhile, we're creating a paper trail that shows a pattern of malingering on your part, faking sick for the attention, or just to get out of your cell. That will lead to documentation showing that you died of sepsis from an unmanaged burst appendix – shouldn't have cried wolf so often. On the very unlikely chance your family takes an interest, investigates, cares about the outcome, and decides to sue, we've set aside money to reimburse the state for their payout in a wrongful death lawsuit, but you and I both know that's not going to happen."

By the end of Hand's speech, Grant's mouth was hanging open, stunned. Offended, maybe. "I'm the right man for the job because – literally – no one cares if I live or die?"

"It wasn't the only criterion, but it certainly helped."

Grant didn't know how to feel about this. It wasn't as though he had failed to notice his unusually constricted social circle, but there was something so blunt about hearing his isolation was to be commodified. His throat felt tight and his face curled into a scowl. "God," he spat, "you are such a cunt."

Hand fixed him with a stare so piercing, he was unable to look away. "That was your one free pass. No matter how angry you get, you will not call me that again."

* * *

 **Day 21**

"If we're not going to talk about the arson itself, let's talk about your older brother," said Hand.

"He used to make me suck his dick," said Grant, in a forced-casual tone.

"Mm-hm," said Hand agreeably. "How did he make you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Did he hold you down, threaten you, bribe you, take advantage of you?"

"Threats. He would say that if I didn't do it, he'd make Thomas instead."

"So you were protecting your younger brother?"

Grant nodded.

Hand scratched her chin, as if considering this information. "Did your older brother ever protect you, do anything nice for you?

Grant furrowed his brow in though for several moments. "Our house was built into a hill, so you were farther from the ground in the back of the house than the front. My parents' bedroom was on the second floor, but from the back, that was at least thirty feet up. They had this balcony. It was, I don't know, maybe three feet wide, twelve feet long. Sometimes when our mother got mad at Christian, she would shove him out there wearing whatever he was wearing, no coat, and lock the doors. She'd leave him there for a long time. All night, even. She did it to me too, but not as often." Grant raised his hand as if to scratch his fading tattoo, but he resisted and returned it to his side. "One time, I was maybe nine or ten, she put me out there and it was late Fall. It was cold. Must not have been freezing, because it was raining. I wasn't out there that long. Maybe an hour. But by the time I came back in, I couldn't stop shivering. So I ran a bath, steaming hot. And I was just about to get in when Christian knocks on the door. He says, 'Put a towel on,' so I do. And he comes in and he says, 'You have to do it gradually or it's a lot worse.' He lets out some of the hot water and adds in a lot of cold. It's barely tepid. He says, 'Lay in that for ten minutes. Then add a little hot and wait some more. Don't go any faster than that.' He didn't say anything else. Just left."

"He was right," said Hand. "If you'd gone straight into the hot bath, you might have lost some fingers or toes."

"Hunh," said Grant.

"Was there any gain for him in helping you?"

"Keeping the family secrets under wraps. He's going into politics, you know. He wants to use our parents' legacy, not be the subject of some sordid tell-all."

"You think that's why he did it?"

Grant sighed. "Why do _you_ think he did it? You want me to say that it had happened to him before so he had sympathy or something, so he helped me out of the goodness of his heart and he really is a good person and should be sorry sorry sorry I tried to kill him."

"That's the first time you've admitted that you were trying to kill him."

"I- I meant that, everyone thinks that-"

"Grant, I'm not stupid. Don't insult me. I've known since the minute I picked up your file."

They were both quiet for almost a minute.

Grant broke the silence. "He's a terrible person, and the world would be a better place without him."

"A lot of people say that about you."

"I'm not the one who broke me out of prison to join some secret paramilitary force."

* * *

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I'm sorry I threatened to…sorry I threatened you. I wouldn't have done it, but I shouldn't have said it. Don't give me M&Ms for apologizing."

That night, like every night, Grant could hear the same plinking waltz play over and over again.

* * *

 **Day 22**

"I thought you said you couldn't cook," said Hand, eyeing the pan of chicken and rice simmering on the stove top.

"Yeah, but I _can_ read. And I'm sick of frozen pizza." Grant pointed to the cookbook that was open on the counter. "I just flipped through it until I found something you had the ingredients for.

* * *

 _Note: Grant's tattoo is a line from Nightwish's Tenth Man Down, and in context, the "great white hunter" probably refers to Death, but Grant doesn't know that. _


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 25**

"This can't be your house," insisted Grant. "You're married, right? But a man doesn't live here. There are no men's clothes in your closet, and when I got here there were no men's shaving things."

Hand laughed very slightly at Grant's argument. "And from all that data, you conclude that this isn't my house? There's no other possibility?"

"Maybe you're not really married. You're a widow, or divorced, and you just wear the ring."

"Why are you so skeptical that this could actually be my house?"

Grant rolled his eyes. "Last house I was in before this one, I set on fire."

"You'd have a hell of a time burning this one down," said Hand pensively. "Mostly brick to begin with, and after I bought it, I made considerable structural upgrades."

"Aren't you scared of me? I don't mean it as a threat. It's just, I _am_ an ex-con and you've got a broken leg." He sighed. "This is coming out wrong. I just mean that you can stop bluffing."

"I appreciate your concern, Grant," said Hand as she produced a packet of M&Ms.

Grant took the candy wordlessly. In a weird way, he appreciated it, and not just because he liked the taste. He found it disturbingly easy to get past the faint whiff of degradation that came with being paid in treats. Instead, he liked knowing what exactly he had to do to please Hand. He wasn't sure if keeping her happy was his long term goal, but on the off chance he decided to really stick with this SHIELD gig, he wanted to know the rules. He hated guessing, hated the sense of random reward and punishment that he got when he had only social cues to go on. This was concrete. This was tangible.

Hand smiled at him almost affectionately. "And note that I am neither confirming nor denying the possibility of a bluff."

For once, Grant felt like he might very slightly be getting a handle on this situation. He decided to press his luck. "What's that song you listen to over and over again?"

Hand's smile dimmed but did not disappear entirely. "It's called _Captain O'Kane_."

"Why? I mean why do you listen to it, not why is it called that."

"It was going to be the first dance at my wedding." At this, Hand looked…not sad, precisely, but distant.

This was easily the most personal admission Hand had ever made to Grant. He tried to process it quickly, to think like a spy and balance the available evidence. "He died," blurted Grant. "Your fiancé, did he die?"

"No," said Hand, strangely amused, "I'm not a widow. I'm just bad at dancing. Could never get the hang of it."

"Waltzing's easy," said Grant. "Just pretend one leg is shorter than the other." He put on his most disaffected face and hobbled in a little circle. It was the most artless dancing Hand had ever seen, but it was perfectly rhythmic.

"You know how to _waltz_?"

Grant pointed a thumb at himself. "Spoiled rich kid, remember?"

* * *

 **Day 28**

"Since you got out of jail."

"Pri-" Grant stopped as though interrupting himself. "You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?"

"And you finally caught on."

"Why?!"

"Because it bothered you. At first I thought it was a tough guy thing: 'don't downgrade my felony to a misdemeanor. Then I thought you just wanted full credit for what you've been through since your conviction: 'I wasn't locked in some puny county jail, I was in a state prison with the worst of the worst.' Now I think you're just being a pedant."

"I don't what that word means."

"Pedant? Someone who believes in rules for rules' sake when it comes to language."

"Isn't that a good thing if I get to work at an intelligence agency?"

"Quite the opposite. We want you to be good at bending the truth."

* * *

"That thing I said about my older brother? It wasn't true."

"Which thing?"

"Don't make me say it again."

Hand waited.

"That he made me, you know, go down on him." Grant's upper lip curled. "He didn't. It never happened."

"Why did you lie?"

"It wasn't just one thing. It was…it was… he was _creative_! He would do so many different things. I can't explain all of it."

"Then don't. Tell me one thing."

"He would frame me for stuff. Steal things and hide them in my bedroom. "

"Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Tell me another thing."

"One time, I had a scrape on my knee. He held me down and rubbed dog shit in it so it would get infected. And yes, that's true."

"Tell me another thing."

Grant was silent for a moment. Then, "There was one time, I was maybe ten. He came up behind me and put his hand over my mouth. He had a pill in his hand and he held my mouth shut until I swallowed it. It was a vitamin pill or an aspirin or something, but I didn't know that. He told me it was poison and I was going to die unless I could throw it back up. I know it was stupid, but I believed him. I stuck my finger down my throat. I remember it didn't work the first few times – I had to keep at it. I really thought I was going to die."

Hand didn't wrinkle her nose in disgust, but only because she was a highly trained agent who was above such things. Instead, she noted the parallelism between Grant's initial story and its revision. Both involved his older brother forcing something into his mouth, something noxious and unwanted, and – if she was going to really indulge herself in her role as armchair psychologist – ejaculation and vomiting were not entirely dissimilar.

She could understand his preference for a simple lie. There was less to say, less to think about. And the true storied meant admitting a level of ignorance, of naiveté. Not that sexual abuse didn't lay bare one's vulnerabilities, but at this point it was such a well-known cultural theme that there was no need to elaborate. And of course, the truth carried an additional risk: You might not be believed – or worse, believed but dismissed. 'That doesn't sound so bad.' 'Brothers always bicker.' 'What are you whining about?' If someone discounted a lie, who cared?

But she didn't say any of that. What she said was, "And he's going into politics?"

* * *

 **Day 37**

It was a Tuesday when the motorcycle pulled into the driveway. Alarms didn't go off, so Grant assumed the visitor was expected.

"Izzy," breathed Hand, "how was the-"

"A complete shit show, but I don't want to talk about that. I want you to throw me on that bed and-" The woman – Izzy, presumably – was suddenly aware of Grant's presence. "What the hell is he doing here?" She straightened, huskiness gone from her voice. "Is that your little recruit?"

"Mr. Ward," said Hand in a formal tone, "I'd like to introduce you to Agent Hartley, my wife."

Isabelle Hartley extended her hand. Grant offered his own, but was still looking back and forth between the two of them as half a dozen clues clicked into place. "You're…she's…I didn't know you were…"

"You'll have to forgive Grant," said Hand to Hartley in a gallant tone. "He was raised by Republicans."

"Oh!" cried Hartley. "You're _that_ one! Well, in that case." She grabbed Hand's buttocks, pulling her close for an extended, grinding kiss. When it ended, she flashed Grant a shit-eating grin and said, "Tell your daddy we say hello."

"The American Marriage Preservation Act," whispered Grant, sounding rather like police sergeant who was coming to the realization that the real killer was one of his own officers. "I didn't… I had nothing to do with…"

"Of course you didn't," said Hand. "Izzy, stop baiting the kid. Grant, go down to the basement and stay there."

Grant obeyed. As he lay on his cot, he listened to the voices from the main floor.

Hand: _Did you lose any?_

Hartley: _Okonjo._

Hand: _Shit._

Hartley: _It was quick. As soon as the shockwave hit him, he just sort of melted._

Hand: _Are you okay?_

Hartley: _Burn on my left thigh. Missed my one percent, though, and that's what counts._

Hand: _You've only got one thing on the brain, don't you?_

Hartley: _Can you blame me? I haven't seen you in over a month._

Hand: _Did you have to notify Okonjo's family?_

Hartley: _No one to notify. Small blessings._

Hand: _(unintelligible)_

Hartley: _It has its benefits. Speaking of which, how's your little project working out?_

Hand: _You know he can hear us, right?_

Hartley: _A little exhibitionism doesn't bother me._

Hand: _Oh for fuck's sake, just hit the button on the-_

Their voices were replaced by a gentle whirring sound. Grant was distinctly relieved that he wasn't going to hear them have sex, even if he was sorely lacking in mental imagery to fuel his masturbation. He didn't think of Hand that way. He remembered feeling tempted to steal her panties when he first arrived at the house. Now she was firmly categorized in his mind as – as what. As a military officer? As a prison guard? As a guardian? As something firmly nonsexual, at any rate.

Besides, if he stayed in the basement and kept his mouth shut, he'd probably get more M&Ms.

* * *

Grant was summoned out of the basement for dinner. Or rather, he was summoned up to _cook_ dinner.

"You've actually gotten her to eat real people food, eh?" asked Hartley appreciatively, elbowing Grant in the ribs.

"Uhh…" Grant didn't know what to make of this woman intruding on their strange little home.

Hartley was still talking. "Normally with her, it's dry cereal for breakfast, canned soup for lunch, frozen pizza for dinner, and topped off with her weird Polish vodka, which is just a crime."

"Stop!" said Hand, grabbing at Hartley's arm and making the word sound like it had about four syllables. She was only using one crutch and – Grant had to rapidly suppress a blush – she was clearly not wearing a bra.

Grant started to back away. "I'm going to…go for a run…"

"Tell you what. Do us one better," said Hartley. She tossed him Hand's keyring and fished a pair of twenties out of her own pocket. "Go get us some General Tso's chicken and whatever else you want. And beer. Heineken."

Grant looked quickly to Hand. This had to be some kind of test. "I don't have my license," he pointed out, though they surely knew that already. "And I'm not twenty one."

Hand just shrugged and pulled a small lockbox out from underneath the sink. It opened to her handprint. After a moment of rummaging, she handed him an unbelievably realistic fake driver's license with his own, real photograph. "There," she said, "now you have a license."

Grant stared at it. His name was listed as Mitchell Podesta and, according to his date of birth, he had recently turned twenty-two. He wanted to ask when and how she had taken his picture without his knowledge, and if she had any more fake IDs for him just lying around, but more than either of those things, he wanted to leave this weird little brick house and its terrifying unpredictable spy lesbians and drive a car again.

* * *

Grant could leave. He knew that. He wouldn't get very far in Hand's SUV, but he could head downtown and buy a bus ticket with the forty dollars, test Hand's promise that he would be free as long as he didn't reoffend. And he might have left, because it was hard to be in the same house as someone who knew he he'd really believed an aspirin was poison, who knew he really was a killer at heart. But he'd also finished the book on the history of SHIELD and he'd listened to them talking about Okonjo's death.

Hand had picked him for this, chosen him to become an agent, really thought that he could do it. Grant didn't know exactly what agents normally did with their time, but she must have something better to do than babysit a teenager.

It made Grant angry, though he could not have said who he was angry at, or why.

He practiced parallel parking outside the Chinese takeout place.

* * *

Isabelle Hartley was _cool_. As much as Grant liked to imagine that an interest in being a badass was something he had outgrown, he couldn't suppress the impulse to copy her. He organized his thoughts on the matter in the form of one of those three-paragraph essays he had been made to write when last he attended school.

Reason number one: General demeanor. She swaggered when she walked and cursed like a sailor with Tourette's. She drank beer in large quantities and never seemed to actually get drunk.

Reason number two: As previously noted, she drove a motorcycle. She had (according to her own stories, though Grant had no reason to doubt her) ridden a motorcycle over the metal struts that made the top of a suspension bridge – called endposts and chords, he learned.

Reason number three: She was proficient in throwing knifes and hatchets. Grant suspected this skill was rarely used in the world of espionage, but that didn't matter to him in the slightest. He wanted her to teach him and was willing to bribe her with the best intel he could provide: "If you do, I'll tell you which senators are gay."

"No deal. But I'll show you how to open a switchblade the right way if you just tell me whether Dale Compton is."

"No. He uses a lot of escorts though."

"Vic, I like this kid."

Still, Grant felt strangely competitive with Hartley, as though Hand were a toy he didn't want to share.

He didn't ask how long Hartley was staying. That would have been overplaying his hand. And besides, it was _their_ house. He was the guest. They were SHIELD agents. He was someone who might possibly one day be a trainee. They were heroes. He had been busted out of prison three years into a twenty-five year sentence. Grant stayed in the background. He studied Polish verbs and quizzed himself on Southeast Asian cities.

* * *

 **Day 42**

Grant heard a thud up the stairs. Not loud or heavy enough to be a body, so not alarming. Maybe Hand and Hartley were having sex again, although they had thus far been considerate enough to activate a noise jammer.

The door to the basement opened, and Grant could just see Hartley's duffel on the floor, its landing having obviously caused the noise. She was leaving, probably going on another mission. Grant had strong feelings about this, but he wasn't at all sure which ones. And then there was Hartley herself, coming down the stairs.

Hartley reached into her wallet and pulled out a few bills. She extended them to Grant. "Buy some ingredients. See if you can get her to eat normal food at least some of the time while I'm gone. You can keep the change."

"Yes, ma'am." Grant pocketed the money without checking to see how much it was. He had always been taught that counting money was gauche.

"Sit down," said Hartley, taking a seat on his cot.

Grant sat next to her, not too close, but not conspicuously far either.

"Vic tells me you've been asking why she picked you. That right?"

Grant nodded.

"Well, quit asking. You're never going to like the answer."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you're like me." Hartley gestured intently while she spoke. "Now Vic, she was a good kid. Never got in trouble. But me? I was involved in a lot of bad shit when I got recruited. And I kept asking them why they wanted me. And they'd give different answers – skills I had, because I was on the radar of someone, because I was off the radar of someone else. But the only answer I wanted to hear was that they chose me because I was a hero. Thing is, I wasn't. I was pretty much scum, to be honest. There wasn't anything special in me that said I could be good. But lucky for me, that wasn't what they were looking for. They knew that _anyone_ could be good if you gave them the chance. And they gave that chance to me instead of the next guy for no good reason. And I'll never, ever deserve it more than anyone else."

Grant wasn't sure what he was supposed to say to that. All of a sudden he had dozens of questions, about who Hartley was and what she had done and what was her mission and how did she meet Hand and why on earth did they have a stupid waltz at their wedding.

But before he could speak, Hartley patted his shoulder and stood. "Besides," she said, "it doesn't matter what anyone predicts. You get to make your own future. The world's not random. Cause and effect. Actions and consequences."

And then Hartley was at the top of the stairs, saying good luck or goodbye or something and the door was shut again and Grant didn't really hear any of it.

* * *

 **Day 43**

While her wife was in residence, Hand had stopped playing that stupid waltz every night. When "Izzy" left, Hand bid a fond farewell didn't seem overtly distraught. Separation, Grant figured, must be very normal for them. The song was just a ritual, almost like a little prayer. With Hartley gone, the song had returned the night before and Grant was surprised to realize that he had missed it.

The next morning, he counted up the cash on his nightstand. There were ten days left until his SHIELD evaluation. Grant decided he was going to sit down with the cookbook and plan meals for the remainder of his time with Hand. He would drive to the store and buy groceries – he had a license, after all. But first he had to talk to Hand. She was sitting at the kitchen table, pouring over page after page of budget requisitions.

Grant hovered at the entrance to the kitchen. "Remember when I told you about my brother Thomas getting thrown through the glass door?" He paused for confirmation, but he didn't look at Hand, nor did he seem to be listening for a response. "I lied."

"About the whole incident or a specific detail?"

"I didn't protect him. I didn't even try. When I saw my father getting angry, I hid."

"Where?"

"Are you listening to me? I'm telling you I lied. I didn't help at all. I saved my own skin."

"And I'm asking where you hid."

"In a kitchen cabinet. One of the ones on the ground. It was a big kitchen, big cabinets, but I barely fit."

"If you were in a cabinet, how did you know what happened to Thomas?"

"I could hear it. He was scream-crying, the way little kids do. I heard dad yelling. The glass breaking. And then Thomas was quiet. I thought he might be dead. And I still did nothing. And before you say, 'Well, you couldn't have overpowered your father,' you have to remember that wasn't the only option. Before he went after Thomas, I could have gotten him mad at me. Or even after, I could have called 9-1-1. But I didn't do any of that."

"When did you leave the cabinet?"

"I don't know. Hours later. I probably fell asleep. It was the middle of the night when I went to my bedroom."

"And what happened to Thomas?"

"Our mother took him to the emergency room. Said we were roughhousing. They patched him up. He wasn't dead."

"Why did you lie about this?"

"Who would you rather be: the guy who protected his little brother, or the guy who fell asleep on a pile of dishrags?"

"Changing the story doesn't change what you did or who you are." Hand paused a moment to let that sink in. "And since you asked, I would rather be the one who expends resources wisely. Fighting every battle – no matter the cost, no matter the losses – might fit a certain storybook notion of bravery, but it's also a good way to lose a war."


	4. Chapter 4

**Day 45**

"Get up." The lights went on in the basement.

Grant awoke more or less immediately. A lifetime of constant threats had trained him to skip the drowsy phase that some people lingered in.

"Get dressed," said Hand, dropping sweatpants and socks on the bed. She herself was already clad in yet another black pantsuit. "We leave in four minutes."

Grant had never undressed in front of Hand, but she showed no sign of leaving the room – she was typing rapidly into some kind of communication device. "What's going on?" he asked, as he took off the undershirt he slept in and put on a rugby shirt. It really wasn't strange, changing clothes in front of her. Grant had never really valued privacy, and besides, it was hard to feel embarrassed in front of someone who already knew all of your secrets.

"There was an incident at the college downtown." Hand put the communication device into a pocket, though Grant couldn't figure out physically how something that size could fit into her clothes without altering her outline at all. "I'm the nearest agent. I need to go assess."

"And you want me to…?"

"It's a college. You look like you belong there. I don't. You're a prop."

They loaded into the SUV. Hand didn't stop to arm herself, which meant that either she felt weapons were unnecessary, she had them on her at all times, or there were extras in the trunk. Grant personally hoped for the latter. It was only a short drive to the college. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of people standing around outside behind makeshift barricades, blankets draped over their shoulders more for effect than for warmth. Police and security were guarding the entrances, more concerned with keeping the frustrated crowd from attempting to re-enter the building than with actually tackling the threat.

Hand scanned the situation as she got out of the SUV. She immediately turned back into the car and rummaged through the compartment between the driver's and passenger's seat. This somehow yielded three pistols, a packet of blood capsules, and a Ziploc baggie of instant coffee grounds. She tucked one gun into her waistband, a second at her ankle, and handed the third to Grant. "You don't fire without my command," she said. "I don't care if you see the Zodiac killer. Don't make me regret this."

Grant held took the gun gingerly. Was it real? He wasn't supposed to be eligible for a gun license anywhere, ever – not with a felony on his record. This was…utterly bizarre. "What's the coffee for?"

"That's how you're going to help," said Hand. She popped a few fake blood capsules into the grounds and mixed it by squishing the baggie. Then, she opened the seal and held it out to him. "Hold this in your mouth and wait for my signal."

It took Grant a moment to realize that she meant the disgusting red-brown mixture within and not the entire plastic bag itself. He tipped back his head and poured the coffee grounds into his mouth, trying not to simultaneously swallow and retch – the taste wasn't that bad, but the texture was entirely unfamiliar.

"Come on." Hand was already making her way through the crowd much faster than a woman on crutches ought to be able to. As she got toward the front she slowed, turned to Grant and put on an uncharacteristically maternal expression. "Come here, sweetie," she said, reaching out a hand for him to take. They had ended up outside of the south stairwell, near an alert young-looking man in a paramedic uniform. Grant reoriented himself to the situation just in time to hear Hand say, "My nephew isn't doing well. I think he was exposed. And he's really-"

Grant felt Hand dig her fingernails into his palm and he knew what to do. With a horrible gulp, he dribbled, then spat and gagged, then dribbled some more the coffee grounds-and-blood mixture onto the guard. It was lubricated by a healthy amount of saliva at this point and looked, if anything, more disgusting than when he had taken it in.

The paramedic's eyes widened. "Black, crumbly emesis," he said in a tone that clearly meant 'emergency'. "He needs to get to the hospital. They're going to need to scope him."

Grant did not know much about the field of medicine, but he knew that scopes generally entered the body one of two ways, neither of which he was wild about. While he protested that he was feeling much better, Hand slipped past the guard and into the building. She was going in alone to face whatever it was. He spat on the ground. His mouth still tasted funny.

He was just a distraction. He didn't much like that. But she had armed him. That had to mean something.

Grant had spent the first fourteen years of his life lying to doctors, so he was very, very prepared for this moment. Just as the EMT began to signal a colleague, Grant sheepishly raised his hand like a schoolkid. He knew it made him look young and endearing. "That…uh…it wasn't blood. Please don't tell my aunt. It was this stupid fraternity thing." Grant glanced at the Greek letters adorning the dorm windows. "Alpha Phi Omega. They can't make us drink anymore after what happened – I dunno, I think it was last year – so they just make us carry around this stuff in our mouths. It's just Jell-o and coffee."

The EMT rolled his eyes. "APO is nothing but trouble, kid. We get called there every weekend, seriously. Pledge something else."

Grant nodded. "Yeah, starting to get that idea." He looked around. "Shit! Where'd my aunt go?" He backed away. "I gotta go find her."

The EMT nodded, giving permission for Grant to bleed back into the crowd, not into the dormitory, of course. Grant still had to find a way in. Here again, a lifetime under threat helped him. He knew how to step lightly, how to casually monitor someone else's gaze and slip past while they were distracted, and yes, he knew how to play the game of "Let's you and him fight." He found a cluster buff-looking preppy kids who were clearly still tipsy from the evening's partying. Rushing past, he pushed one into the other. "What the fuck, bro?" muttered Grant indistinctly.

Grant grinned in satisfaction as a scuffle broke out. As a security guard went to deal with it, she left a hole in the perimeter for Grant to sneak through. He ran down a brick pathway to the door Hand had entered by. When he opened it, he could immediately see that something was horribly wrong. There was a body in the stairwell, a girl not much older than Grant in skimpy pajamas. Her lips were bright, cherry red and her skin was a dull cyanotic blue. She was dusted with flakes of sickly green wax. When she collapsed, the pajama shirt had obviously shifted so as not to cover one breast. Grant surprised himself by not thinking any particular sexual thoughts. Instead, he readjusted the shirt to give her body some dignity. The cloth was gritty and oily – something had obviously settled on it, the same substance that was on the stairs and handrails. Grant made a note to keep his hands to himself.

He ran up the first flight of stairs and then the second. He had to be catching up to Hand. The stairs must have slowed her down. He could hear a faint whining noise from above, getting louder as he climbed.

Grant found Hand on the fourth floor, doggedly continuing up the last flight of stairs. "How the hell did you get in?" she asked. "No, never mind, later. It's a science project gone wrong. We get a lot of those," she explained as they ascended to the top floor. "Get your gun out and hold it up. Can't do any good if you're not holding it." She breathed heavily for a moment – climbing stairs on crutches was a challenge. "It obviously emitted some kind of poison, but it seems to have-"

There was a blue haze in the air that smelled like almonds and made Grant's eyes burn.

Hand assessed the situation and came to a conclusion in a matter of seconds. "You're going to turn around and drive back to the house. It's less than three miles and I know you were watching the street signs on the way here. When you get there, you're going to need to disarm the security. You need to memorize this list of words: _Carolina_ , _bluebell_ , _wristwatch_ -"

"Wait, wait, I'm not going anywhere. You brought me with you to help, right? I can help."

"You already helped. I don't have time to argue with you."

"You keep reaching for your gun. Whatever's in there, you're getting ready to shoot it, but you need to keep your hands on your crutches. I learned aim in military school. I'm a good shot." Grant looked Hand in the eye. "I can help," he repeated.

Hand rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed. "When you were a kid, did you memorize a list of something? States? Presidents?"

It was a sign of the trust they had developed that Grant took the question at face value. "I know the presidents."

"This is how we're going to do this. We're going to walk back to back. I'm going to go first, which means you're going to walk backwards. You're going to stay calm. I'm going to say one president, then you're going to say the next one. Back and forth. Focus on that. You're not going to touch anything, especially not your mouth or your eyes. You're going to breathe in through your nose. You're going to keep your gun up. And if I tell you to drop, you're going to do it right away. No arguing. Do you understand?"

Grant nodded. His lips were dry. He wanted to lick them, but he suspected that was a violation of the no-touching rule.

Hand tossed one crutch aside. With her newly free hand, she raised her weapon and faced forward down the hall. "Washington," she said.

"Adams." Grant got into position behind her.

"Jefferson." Hand started to walk forward slowly.

"Madison." A light flickered, but Grant didn't startle. He panned the gun from side to side, scanning the hallway behind. They had just come from that direction, so any assailants were much more likely to attack Hand first, a fact which Grant did not find particularly comforting.

They made their way down the hallway at an agonizingly slow pace. The greenish wax was caked on the walls, the floorboards, the machinery in the halls. The floor itself was relatively spared, which allowed Grant to focus on keeping his gun level instead of struggling to keep his footing. He had no idea how Hand was managing in high heels, though in fairness at least she was walking face-forward.

"Monroe," said Grant. There was a body on the ground, covered in a thin sheen of wax, with tendrils of the stuff bursting out of it like fungal spores. Maybe they were spores. Suddenly breathing through the nose did not seem like sufficient precaution. He was going to come down with a bad case of xenomorphs and-

"Adams Junior," answered Hand. She sounded steady, unafraid. That was comforting. She also wasn't offering Grant the chance to run away again, either because running at this point was more dangerous than walking through hell with a trained SHEILD agent as a guide, or because she genuinely wanted his help.

"Jackson," said Grant. The whining sound was getting louder as they made their way down the corridor. "We should switch places," he said, more because he thought he ought to than because he genuinely wanted to do so.

"Van Buren." Hand didn't dignify his suggestion with a response.

"Harri-" The whine suddenly picked up and a painfully bright red light seemed to come from every direction at once. Grant didn't have to be told to drop to the ground as the source of the noise began spitting thick ropes of some sort of plasma. He looked up just far enough to see that Hand had taken cover behind a study carrel. Her right sleeve was smoking and torn, obviously damaged by the blast. She was right-handed, Grant realized. Could she shoot with her left? Grant looked up again. Everything – the light, the plasma, the green wax, the blue gas – was all streaming from a cube about the size of a softball. He looked back to the ground, shielding his eyes. It hurt to look at that thing for too long. He knew how to shoot from prone. He'd done it plenty at military school. But he'd given his word. "Give the order!" he shouted.

"Yes! Shoot it!"

Grant propped himself on his elbows, mindful that every extra inch of height brought him closer to the deadly chaos circling in the air. He aimed. He exhaled. He pulled the trigger.

* * *

Hand's arm was only grazed so she insisted on driving them home. She had no idea what the terror box was, or who had made it, or how many casualties there were. Those things were the job of a cleanup crew. She and Grant had served as the tourniquet, had stopped the bleeding. That was what mattered.

She parked the SUV in her driveway, made a mental note to change the plates tomorrow and stumbled out, only to find Grant by her door, wordlessly offering her a shoulder. She accepted gratefully.

"What was the blue gas?" asked Grant. "Why did you change your mind?"

"First rule of being an agent," said Hand, "always assume the worst. It smelled like almonds, which could mean cyanide."

When they got inside, Hand opened an otherwise invisible panel in the wall to retrieve first aid supplies. Gauze for her arm – it was just a graze, but there was no excuse for letting it get infected. And inhalers for both of them. She handed one to Grant. "Shower first, and then go to bed," she said. "I know you're wired. Adrenalin. But you should try to sleep. If you feel like you can't catch your breath, use this. If that doesn't work, get me right away."

Grant nodded numbly. He was only now starting to realize that he was covered in sweat. He did as he was told.

* * *

"Grant," said Hand, urgency in her voice, "are you all right? Is your breathing okay?"

"What? No, it's fine. I woke up and used the inhaler once and it worked. I'm fine. I just got up to use the bathroom." He did so, and walked back to the living room. "Why are you sleeping on the couch?"

"I'm not sleeping. I was keeping an ear out for you, making sure you didn't stop breathing."

"I'm fine. I only caught a little of the gas. You got a lot more of it."

"You're my responsibility," murmured Hand through a yawn.

There was a moment before Grant's face shifted, briefly looking stricken before returning to its prior state. He had never before been someone else's responsibility, not really, and he wasn't sure how to feel about it. He sat down on the other end of the sofa, pulling his feet up underneath him. "I'll sleep up here," he said. "You can go to sleep, and you'll be able to hear it if I start gagging or something."

Hand looked at him as though she were going to object or say thank you, but she just smiled tiredly instead. "You did good tonight."

"Well," corrected Grant pedantically.

"No," said Hand, "good."

* * *

 **Day 52**

Grant lay on the sofa, on his side, arms hanging limply over the edge. His left arm stretched over his right so his wrists were crossed in an X.

"I don't think I can do this SHIELD thing." Grant's breathing was strident, as though there was a line of saliva splitting his airstream. Perhaps there was. "We had this dog. Her real name was Delta but Thomas called her Deedee and it stuck. She was a nice dog. Lazy. But you could just pet her when things were bad. And I don't know what made it start, but I got mean to her. I would kick her, pinch her. Once, I heated up a fork on the stove and poked her with the hot end. There were these four little red spots, four little circles where the fur burned and stank. Must've hurt a lot. And it wasn't like she was bad and I was punishing her. I just did it. And because of all that, she got mean. Really mean. One day, she bit Thomas out of the blue. They had to put her down."

Hand looked down at Grant's face. It was twitching. First, he seemed blank. Then, there was a flash of guilt or grief or perhaps just simple embarrassment. After a moment, the expression was gone and replaced by clenched teeth. The cycle repeated.

"Did your older brother make you do that?" asked Hand.

The twitching stopped. Grant seemed to be holding his breath. Finally, "No," he said. "I don't know why I did it. I know it was wrong. I knew then it was wrong. I did it anyway." There was a pause, and Hand could hear a gulp. "She was a good dog and I-" Another gulp. "I hurt her. I got her killed." That strident breathing again. Grant spoke in a watery voice: "I don't know why I did it."

Hand looked down at Grant, her expression somehow conveying that she knew he had never had a dog, and also that he was in fact telling a very important truth.

"You should get some rest," said Hand.

* * *

 **Day 71**

Grant wasn't sure if he had been expecting SHIELD academy to have barracks, but semiprivate dormitory rooms were a pleasant surprise. He put his duffel on one of the bunks, unsure whether to start unpacking or wait for his roommate to negotiate sides. Then he noticed masking tape with GW on one bed and JS on the other. Problem solved. The beds had thin drawers underneath – they certainly weren't going to need an expansive wardrobe. Grant opened the drawers to empty out his duffel and he began to laugh. Not just a quiet little giggle, but a full throated laugh.

In the drawer was a pack of M&Ms.


End file.
